I have been teaching English online for the past 5 years using a company based out of China. They will hire people anywhere in the world if you are a native English speaker and even a few people here and there that are not native. Your ability to make money depends almost entirely on how well you engage your audience and just like in anything else, the people who are just starting out find it difficult to gain clients and the people that have been doing it a while don't have much trouble at all because you get a star rating and referrals.
For me, I have more work than I need but the company that I work for carefully controls our hourly rate so we can't really ever ask for more money.
The way it works is that you are using their platform, they advertise the company and organize the schedule. All you have to do is live somewhere with a solid internet connection and be available during the time that the students want to study with you. This is why living in Vietnam or somewhere else cheap in Southeast Asia is so crucial because while you could do this anywhere in the world, the times that you would have to be awake and willing to work would be a bit nuts if you were on the other side of the planet.
our hours are mostly lunch breaks for businessmen, and after school sessions with kids. We get really busy during school breaks and all of that kind of makes me sad because it is pretty evident that the kids don't actually want to do this but are being forced to always be learning something by their parents.
Thankfully the company I work for creates lesson plans for us because I have worked online in the past where creation of lessons was up to me and this takes up more time than the actual teaching does.
While I do work for multiple companies, I am mostly employed by Cambly only because that was where I started and am most familiar with the system. I'm at the point now where I don't really even think about the lessons before I log on for a certain scheduled lesson since the plan is already there in the interface for both of us to see. They can see me, but I cannot always see them because it really isn't necessary for me to be able to see them. They need to be able to see me because sometimes I will be using visual aides although the company does provide us with a digital workbook that the student has access to the same time that we do.
What makes this job so easy after you have been doing it a while is that the instructors, we are not really in charge of deciding a method of getting through to the kids. We aren't really in charge of teaching them grammar or basic sentence structure either, mostly we are there to refine their pronunciation and to give them pointers on a "better" way of saying something. A lot of my students want me to teach them slang and mostly they want to learn swear words. We are not supposed to engage in this but I will admit that I do actually tell them every now and then.
You aren't going to get rich by teaching English online, that much is for sure. But I do kind of appreciate the freedom that it allows me because I work from home with a sheet behind me in the background that simulates and office of sorts. I don't really even mind doing it and I get paid around $13 an hour for it.
I think that this is very fair and it is more than enough money to live pretty well here in Vietnam and also put away enough money to have a bit of savings and also go on a vacation trip to my home country once a year. This isn't really a career per se, but I do get to live anywhere that I want and as long as I am not doing it "too much" there really isn't much of a limit to how much time I can have off.
When I look at the jobs a lot of my friends have in their home countries and how they only get 2 weeks a year off of work, I think that kind of sounds like near slavery. I don't actually HAVE TO clock in any day and since almost all of my class material is provided for me, I am quite ok with Cambly taking a percentage of my hourly wages.
If you feel as though you would like to do something like this you don't really need high qualifications to to it. You just need to pass an interview and test lesson and that is not as stressful as you might be thinking. It can be a bit rough at first because when you first start out nobody knows who you are and therefore are hesitant to book you. But once you establish a rapport with the students, there is a very good chance that you are going to get to know them, and hang on to them for years. I have seen several of my own students grow up from Kindergarten where we were just singing silly songs and talking about colors to now doing rather complicated mathematics that they tell me about during our few minutes of "free conversation."
It's not a terrible job is what I am saying and chances are, if you are fortunate enough to be a Native-speaker, that you could do it as well if you want to.
If you think this is something you might like to look at further,
here is where you start. I don't get paid anything for this, this is not a referral link. I just think that I quite enjoy the freedom that having this as my job has afforded me, and there is no reason to not tell other people about it.
